Romance Comics, the Mighty Thor, and the Kirby × Colletta "Feud"
Simon & Kirby create the Romance comic-book craze:
Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were cartooning partners who created some of the most groundbreaking comic books of the prewar era, most notably creating the iconic evergreen character Captain America. After being discharged from their WW2 military service, they decided to branch out. Sales of superhero comics had sputtered, and they reasoned that their audience had grown up and might be hungry for stories of young people building relationships, and that young women were a largely untapped potential market for comic books if one could appeal to them.
So they pitched the idea of a comic book of Romance stories, similar to the "True Confession" genre of romance magazines that had been popular reading with young women since the 1920s. Simon & Kirby negotiated keeping an unprecedented half of the profits. This deal was a huge windfall for the pair, as their brainchild Young Romance was such a hit that it sold through an equally unprecedented over 90% of its print run.
Let's take a look at a sample of Kirby & Simon's interior art from this historic publication:
This is an absolutely striking composition from Kirby with the cinematic extreme foregrounding of the background with some random foliage in your face to imply that the couple in the car are off at a distance, and the pop-art-like jaunty angle of the title phrase.
Simon uses his ink here like a painter, with the vigorous thick lines (especially the clothing folds) and the wide swaths of shadow creating contrast and drama.
I think it's worth noting that this is a lot closer to an illustration you might expect to see from Kirby 20 years later than five years earlier. From day one, Kirby had an amazing dynamism and groundbreaking cinematic staging, but his actual illustration was relatively primative. Here's an example from the first Captain America Comics in 1941:
Whereas here's an example of a mature Kirby from the 50th issue of The Fantastic Four from 1966:
But the adjectives I chose to describe that Romance page say a lot: "striking," "jaunty," "dynamic," "vigorous." All superlative, but not exactly romantic per se. While Kirby brought Romance comics to the world, it would be other cartoonists who followed in his footsteps who would actually bring a suitably more delicate sensibility to the Romance genre.
Vince Colletta brings the romance to Romance
One very noteworthy example was Vince Colletta, an artist who would go on to have an infamous reputation as a hack with the fans of superhero comics. The main reason for this was that Colletta had almost the exact opposite approach of most inkers to ever work on Kirby's pencils, including when Kirby would occassionally ink his own work: Rather than thick, vibrant lines that lend energy and dynamism, he was known for thin, feathery lines and hatching that gave his work a lush, ethereal vibe.
As the 50s went on, Colletta grew a reputation for drawing the most beautiful women in comic books.
but like the first Superhero boom and the Crime comics boom, the Romance boom couldn't last forever.
The Return of the Super Heros
As the 1950s wore on, Joe Simon decided to move on from the comic book business. His longtime partner in business and art, Jack Kirby, continued on as a cartoonist, sometimes writing and inking his own penciled art, sometimes working with whomever an editor paired him with. He worked in all sorts of genres, from Romance to Adventure stories to the popular new fad in comic books of B-Movie-style Monster comics. He even occassionally dabbled in one of the few surviving features from the Golden Age of Super Heros that he'd been such a big part of, such as a memorable run reinventing Green Arrow.
Meanwhile Colletta had gained a reputation as someone who could save editor's deadlines by turning other artist's late pencilled work into publishable finished pages with that distinctive hatching style in record time, to the point that inking became his sole focus by the end of the 1950s.
Only three superheros — Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman — had survived in their own magazines straight through from the original superhero boom of the late 1930s. But in the last few years of the 1950s, their publisher introduced several new reinventions of moribund IPs such as Flash and Green Lantern, and in 1960 had a major hit with a title teaming up all of their major heros, new and old, called Justice League of America.
During this upswing for their competition, the company Colletta had been doing most of his Romance work for (known variously over the years as Timely Comics, Atlas Comics, and lately, briefly, as Goodman Comics after the publisher Saul Goodman) had fallen on hard times. In 1957, their distributor had gone out of business, and their only option was to go to their primary competitor for distribution, who were only willing to take on a handful of their titles.
With their competition having such success with a Superhero team, Goodman suggested to his editor Stan Lee to try the genre again. Lee brainstormed this concept with Kirby and they came up with the Fantastic Four, the success of which changed comic books forever and led to a new boom of superhero titles from the publisher, now renamed again to Marvel Comics.
A Super god
According to Lee, the concept for The Mighty Thor was that since they had done every other sort of super hero over the last several months, the only way to further escalate would be to create a superhero who was a god! The Marvel Comics version of Thor was basically the Marvel take on the well-established tropes of Superman and Captain Marvel (Shazam!)... a superstrong Adonis flying through the air with a flowing cape, but with a mild-mannered civilian alter ego. Except that Thor had a built-in backstory of the Norse myths.
It was an interesting concept developed in a lackluster way, with various writers wandering on and off the title for the first couple years. Until in 1964 the unlikely pairing of Kirby and Colletta were assigned to the back-up feature, Tales of Asgard, intended to tell the backstory of Thor's youth, essentially direct retellings of Norse myths.
The combination of Kirby's bold strokes and Colletta's fine details made some alchemy, perfectly realizing the mix of pure power and ancient myth inherent in the concept.
Within a few months this great teaming took over the art on the main feature as well. They created some truly memorable images, including iconic covers:
As well as astoundingly lovely interior art:
This unlikely team depicted the blond-tressed hero's struggles against ever-escalating threats for the next 5 years, until lack of control and credit led Kirby to switch to Marvel's Distinguished Competition in 1970.
Breaking up
For DC Comics, Kirby created the concept of the Fourth World — four linked titles featuring a new pantheon of SF gods and demigods from the warring planets of New Genesis and Apokolips, including the perennial archvillain Darkseid.
The similarities of this concept to that of the Thor feature are obvious, so working with Colletta again seemed a no-brainer. However, while the Fourth World books were intended to be a modern mythology, they were a futuristic sci-fi mythology, so Colletta's style contrast may not have been as perfect a fit as it had been on Tales of Asgard and Thor.
At this point Kirby's assistant, Mark Evanier, claimed that Colletta was ruining Kirby's art, and basically campaigned to convince his boss to fire him and switch to an inker who would slavishly imitate Kirby's own style rather than making any artistic interpretation of their own.
Eventually, the two men sat down together and came to the mutual agreement that if Kirby wanted someone who could focus just on inking Kirby's titles and have time to faithfully reproduce every little widget in his crazy super-machines, for example, that they'd be better off both moving on. Not really a "feud" other than in the imagination of some fans, but the end of a long odd-couple art partnership that had been beloved by some while infamous to others...
Here's one more image from that partnership, this time of the planet-devouring calamity, Galactus:
